of
supervision, but I will confess that I never have. Up North I have
often watched the varying hare about his business when he had no
idea that I was one of the party, but the sophisticated
Massachusetts rabbit has always been too clever for me. But it is
not so difficult to follow the tracks, confusing as they sometimes
are in their labyrinthine route, to their end for the forenoon.
This is usually a snuggery under some brush or in a tangle of
dried grasses and ferns. Here I fancy the rabbit backing in and
crowding out a sitting room and then sitting in it. He will stay
in this "form" until you fairly kick him out, and when I have done
this, as politely as possible under the circumstances, I for a
moment see the rabbit making tracks. Ten to one he makes them down
hill, for in that direction lies the cedar swamp in whose almost
impassable tangle he finds safety. Great tracks these are, too,
his short forelegs just serving to catch and balance his plunge
for a second, then the long hind ones coming wide of these,
outside, and landing far in advance. They really look as if the
animal might have made them by turning handsprings as he went.

I never see a fox by trailing him. He goes much too rapidly and
ranges too far. Yet the fox has an interesting habit of following
a more or less regular route. Even when the dogs are after him he
often sticks to his known trail and the hunters take advantage of
this, waiting along his known route and shooting him as he lopes
by, easily outrunning the dogs and as likely as not grinning over
his shoulder at their lumbering eagerness. It is all a game to him
and if man would keep out of it the fox would always win. The way
to see a fox in the woods is to figure out his accustomed route
and sit cosily by it. He likes best to hunt in the dim beginnings
of dawn and again at the evening twilight or by the light of the
moon. But often a fox may be seen jogging along in the full
daylight. The very keenness of the animal seems sometimes to work
his undoing. He knows well that the dogs cannot catch him so he
jollies along just in front of them over his accustomed route
where he knows every possible pitfall of the way. And the hunter
waiting to leeward shoots him. Had the fox had fewer brains and
simply bolted in a panic as soon as the dogs got on his trail he
might have lived to bolt again the next time. Once in a while you
find a panicky fox that does this. When the dogs get after him he
mak